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CHARLOTTE Pushing constitutional amendments tends to be the province of Republican presidents: to mandate balanced budgets, for instance, or to make abortion illegal. But President Obama has been both speaking privately and flirting openly with the notion of amending the Constitution. His goal would be to overturn the Supreme Court's Citizens United decision and get the biggest-money checks out of politics. Obama advisers have been edging up to this for months. In February, urging donors to open their checkbooks to...

The social news site Reddit is being hit with what the company called a "malicious" denial of service attack, first disclosed via its official Twitter account Friday. The company first disclosed that it was being targeted with an attack on Friday around 6:30 a.m. Eastern. As of mid-morning on Friday, most users were able to access the site, though some site functions have been disabled . The company has not said if it has any indication of who is behind the attack. Reddit did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Wikipedia founder James Wales has floated the idea of a Wikipedia blackout to protest the Stop Online Piracy Act and the Protect IP Act in the past, but has had a renewed burst of interest following the announcement that Reddit — the Web news and aggregation site — will black out its services in protest of online piracy bills Jan. 18. The protest coincides with a House Oversight Committee hearing called by Chairman Darrell Issa (R-Calif.)...

Within hours after the Boston Marathon explosions, Google and the Red Cross had uploaded databases helping people locate loved ones. Shortly after, Internet communities including Reddit and 4chan launched their own online search mission: Find the perpetrators. Sift through millions of megapixels, through a thousand individual Zapruder films, and identify the person(s) who planted the devices that killed three people and wounded nearly 200 more. It's the natural impulse of 2013.

President Obama participated in a surprise open question-and-answer session Wednesday afternoon on the Web community Reddit, as the subject of one of the site's regular "Ask Me Anything" threads. Reddit's site experienced some outages immediately following the announcement, due to increased traffic. Users reported they were having trouble logging into the site as the session began. Reddit announced that the president would be fielding questions starting at 4:30 p.m. Wednesday as part of his campaign stop in ...

The social news site Reddit is being hit with what the company called a "malicious" denial of service attack, first disclosed via its official Twitter account Friday. The company first disclosed that it was being targeted with an attack on Friday around 6:30 a.m. Eastern. As of mid-morning on Friday, most users were able to access the site, though some site functions have been disabled . The company has not said if it has any indication of who is behind the attack. Reddit did not immediately respond to a...

It is not easy being No.2. As we hinted yesterday , Reddit, the news voting site that was bought by Conde Nast in 2006, is making the code behind its site open source. (The code can be found here ). That means anyone can now make their own Digg-like site. Not that there has been any lack of Digg clones in the past. Reddit's move to open-source its software is merely an acknowledgment that it is already a commodity. The truth is that it is not the technology that makes sites like Digg or Reddit...

No, Mitt Romney didn't show up to do an Ask Me Anything. Another Obamaesque, high-profile Q & A would be a great explanation for site problems at Reddit. But there's a far less exciting reason for why it's been tough for some users to get to the site. Reddit, Airbnb and Imgur on Monday were been affected by a hiccup at Amazon Web Service's servers in northern Virginia. Erik Martin, Reddit's general manager, confirmed that the downtime appears to be the result of a "Amazon issue.

Within moments of the first bursts of gunfire inside a suburban Denver movie theater, the Reddit community was buzzing. "Someone came into our theater at the midnight release of Dark Knight Rises and began opening fire," read a posting on the user-generated news site by a "redditor" named Peener13. She described being in the theater next door in Aurora, Colo., when the shooting began and later posted a photo of her ticket to prove she was there. "Who here on Reddit can help me calm my nerves?"

Reddit founder Alexis Ohanian has accomplished what virtually no one else in Washington is doing these days: bringing the political parties together on a controversial issue. Democrats and Republicans have stepped up their support this year of Ohanian's cause of keeping the Web free of government intervention. During their conventions, both sides touted a platform plank affirming Internet freedom. And last week, President Obama stopped by Reddit for a surprise question-and-answer session, saying he would...

Bill Gates held court on Reddit on Monday, becoming just the latest notable figure to submit to the site's open question-and-answer sessions. Gates ostensibly started an "Ask Me Anything" conversation on Reddit to talk about his annual letter, which outlines his thoughts about the state of the world. But, in the true spirit of the feature, was also happy to chat about Microsoft products, his portrayal in the film "Pirates of Silicon Valley" and his relationship with the late Steve Jobs.

Start talking about restaurant tipping, and you can wind up in a passionate debate. Some people hate being pressured or guilt-tripped to tip at all, especially when the service is mediocre to awful. Others, including many who have worked in the service industry, loathe people who don't tip or don't tip enough. It's part of the pay for restaurant workers they argue. So, it didn't surprise me when a recent tipping story spread quickly over the Internet. The backstory : The Consumerist reported that St. Louis resident Alois Bell, a...

This piece is part of a roundtable centered around innovation prescriptions for the new Congress and President Barack Obama's second term. Read more about the roundtable here. Much has been made of President Barack Obama's social media savvy, but he did a poor job communicating with millennials, the generation in their twenties and thirties, during his first term. Despite the fact he was elected twice with overwhelming support from young voters, Obama has been unable to mobilize this generation to support his...

To some, he was a genius and a pioneering software developer. To others, he was an activist and political organizer. To Reddit, the wildly popular social news site, he was all these things and one more besides: an innovator who, at age 19, helped give millions of people a place to exchange jokes, stories, cat photos, memes -- all the things that make the Internet worth surfing. Swartz, who hanged himself in his Brooklyn apartment on Jan. 11 , is widely...

When it comes to Reddit users, it's much better to work with them than against them. And at least one U.S. representative has decided to get proactive. Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.) has released a new post on her congressional website asking Reddit for help in crafting a new bill about the government's ability to seize domain names suspected of mass copyright infringement. "During SOPA I saw firsthand the Reddit community's strong dedication to free expression. Because...

No, Mitt Romney didn't show up to do an Ask Me Anything. Another Obamaesque, high-profile Q & A would be a great explanation for site problems at Reddit. But there's a far less exciting reason for why it's been tough for some users to get to the site. Reddit, Airbnb and Imgur on Monday were been affected by a hiccup at Amazon Web Service's servers in northern Virginia. Erik Martin, Reddit's general manager, confirmed that the downtime appears to be the result of a "Amazon issue.

Bill Gates held court on Reddit on Monday, becoming just the latest notable figure to submit to the site's open question-and-answer sessions. Gates ostensibly started an "Ask Me Anything" conversation on Reddit to talk about his annual letter, which outlines his thoughts about the state of the world. But, in the true spirit of the feature, was also happy to chat about Microsoft products, his portrayal in the film "Pirates of Silicon Valley" and his relationship with the late Steve Jobs.

Community news sharing site Reddit is planning to shut down its website January 18 in protest of proposed legislation the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) as well as the Protect Internet Protocol Act (PIPA), the company announced via a blog post today. SOPA gives both the U.S. government and copyright holders the authority to seek court orders against websites associated with infringing, pirating and/or counterfeiting intellectual property. Should SOPA (or PIPA) pass, it could...

Reddit has been shaken up by Gawker's expose of Texas programmer, Michael Brutsch, also known as a mean-spirited troll Violentacrez on the sprawling internet community site. Brutsch was outed by Gawker writer Adrian Chen. He was a powerful member of the Reddit community who had a knack for creating popular discussions. But he also posted a lot of pictures of under-age girls in provocative poses in a sub-Reddit called Jailbait. He also engaged in a lot of race baiting and Gawker dubbed him...

Reddit founder Alexis Ohanian has accomplished what virtually no one else in Washington is doing these days: bringing the political parties together on a controversial issue. Democrats and Republicans have stepped up their support this year of Ohanian's cause of keeping the Web free of government intervention. During their conventions, both sides touted a platform plank affirming Internet freedom. And last week, President Obama stopped by Reddit for a surprise question-and-answer...